Although he heard nothing, suddenly he knew that someone was standing behind him. He stiffened, seized with terror. Then he spun round.
The man standing there looked like an animal. Apart from a pair of shorts he was naked. The old man looked into his face with dread. He couldn’t see if it was deformed or hidden behind a mask. In one hand the man held an axe. In his confusion the old man noticed that the hand around the shaft of the axe was very small, that the man was like a dwarf.
He screamed and started to run, back towards the garden gate.
He died the instant the edge of the axe severed his spine, just below the shoulder blades. And he knew no pain as the man, who was perhaps an animal, knelt down and slit an opening in his forehead and then with one violent wrench ripped most of the scalp from his skull.
It was a little after midnight. It was Tuesday, 21 June.
The motor of a moped started up somewhere nearby, and moments later died away.
Everything was once again very still.
CHAPTER 2
Around noon on 21 June, Kurt Wallander left the police station in Ystad. So that no-one would notice his going, he walked out through the garage entrance, got into his car, and drove down to the harbour. Since the day was warm he had left his sports jacket hanging over his chair at his desk. Anyone looking for him in the next few hours would assume he must be somewhere in the building. Wallander parked by the theatre, walked out on the inner pier and sat down on the bench next to the red hut belonging to the sea rescue service. He had brought along one of his notebooks, but realised that he hadn’t brought a pen. Annoyed, he nearly tossed the notebook into the harbour. But this was impossible. His colleagues would never forgive him.
Despite his protests, they had appointed him to make a speech on their behalf at 3 p.m. that day for Bjork, who was resigning his post as Ystad chief of police.
Wallander had never made a formal speech in his life. The closest he had come were the innumerable press conferences he had been obliged to hold during criminal investigations.
But how to thank a retiring chief of police? What did one actually thank him for? Did they have any reason to be thankful? Wallander would have preferred to voice his uneasiness and anxiety at the vast, apparently unthoughtout reorganisations and cutbacks to which the force was increasingly subjected. He had left the station so he could think through what he was going to say in peace. He’d sat at his kitchen table until late the night before without getting anywhere. But now he had no choice. In less than three hours they would gather and present their farewell gift to Bjork, who was to start work the next day in Malmo as head of the district board of immigration affairs.
Wallander got up from the bench and walked along the pier to the harbour cafe. The fishing boats rocked slowly in their moorings. He remembered idly that once, seven years ago, he had been involved in fishing a body out of this harbour. But he pushed away the memory. Right now, the speech he had to make for Bjork was more important. One of the waitresses lent him a pen. He sat down at a table outside with a cup of coffee and forced himself to write a few sentences. By 1 p.m. he had put together half a page. He looked at it gloomily, knowing that it was the best that he could do. He motioned to the waitress, who came and refilled his cup.
“Summer seems to be taking its time,” Wallander said to her.
“Maybe it won’t get here at all,” replied the waitress.
Apart from the difficulty of Bjork’s speech, Wallander was in a good mood. He would be going on holiday in a few weeks. He had a lot to be happy about. It had been a long, gruelling winter. He knew that he was in great need of a rest.
At 3 p.m. they gathered in the canteen of the station and Wallander made his speech to Bjork. Svedberg gave him a fishing rod as a present, and Ann-Britt Hoglund gave him flowers. Wallander managed to embellish his scanty speech on the spur of the moment by recounting a few of his escapades with Bjork. There was great amusement as he recalled the time when they had both fallen into a pool of liquid manure after some scaffolding they were climbing collapsed. In his reply Bjork wished his successor, a woman named Lisa Holgersson, good luck. She was from one of the bigger police districts in Smaland and would take over at the end of the summer. For the time being Hansson would be the acting chief in Ystad. When the ceremony was over and Wallander had returned to his office, Martinsson knocked on his half-open door, and came in.
“That was a great speech,” he said. “I didn’t know you could do that sort of thing.”
“I can’t,” said Wallander. “It was a lousy speech. You know it as well as I do.”
Martinsson sat down cautiously in the broken visitor’s chair.
“I wonder how it’ll go with a woman chief,” he said.
“Why wouldn’t it go well?” replied Wallander. “You should be worrying instead about what’s going to happen with all these cutbacks.”
“That’s exactly why I came to see you,” said Martinsson. “There’s a rumour going round that staff numbers are going to be cut back on Saturday and Sunday nights.”
Wallander looked at Martinsson sceptically.
“That won’t work,” he said. “Who’s going to deal with the people we’ve got in the cells?”
“Rumour has it that they’re going to take tenders for that job from private security companies.”
Wallander gave Martinsson a quizzical look.
“Security companies?”
“That’s what I heard.”
Wallander shook his head. Martinsson got up.
“I thought you ought to know about it,” he said. “Do you have any idea what’s going to happen within the force?”
“No,” said Wallander. “Cross my heart.”
Martinsson lingered in the office.
“Was there something else?”
Martinsson took a piece of paper out of his pocket.
“As you know, the World Cup has started. Sweden was 2–2 in the game against Cameroon. You bet 5–0 in favour of Cameroon. With this score, you came in last.”
“How could I come in last? Either I bet right or wrong, didn’t I?”
“We run statistics that show where we are in relation to everyone else.”
“Good Lord! What’s the point of that?”
“An officer was the only one who picked 2–2,” said Martinsson, ignoring Wallander’s question. “Now for the next match. Sweden against Russia.”
Wallander was totally uninterested in football, although he had occasionally gone to watch Ystad’s handball team, which had several times been ranked as one of the best in Sweden. But lately the entire country seemed to be obsessed by the World Cup. He couldn’t turn on the TV or open a newspaper without being bombarded with speculation as to how the Swedish team would fare. He knew that he had no choice but to take part in the football pool. If he didn’t, his colleagues would think he was arrogant. He took his wallet out of his back pocket.
“How much?”
“A hundred kronor. Same as last time.”
He handed the note to Martinsson, who checked him off on his list.
“Don’t I have to guess the score?”
“Sweden against Russia. What do you think?”
“4–4,” said Wallander.
“It’s pretty rare to have that many goals scored in football,” Martinsson said, surprised. “That sounds more like ice hockey.”
“All right, let’s say 3–1 to Russia,” said Wallander. “Will that do?”
Martinsson wrote it down.
“Maybe we can take the Brazil match while we’re at it,” Martinsson went on.
“3–0 to Brazil,” said Wallander quickly.